(Nimue)
I've made a physical home for a powerful, transformative spirit. I invited this spirit to live in the home that I made for it, and to work with me. Generously, this spirit has helped to heal and nourish my body. It's an experience that has had me wondering about how we invite Godds into physical forms.
The spirit in my home is yeast, a mighty being that has transformed human life and without which we probably wouldn't have settled civilization as we know it. Whether you are brewing or baking, if you work with wild yeast as most of our ancestors did, you have to make a place for the yeast to live. You have to feed it and take care of it, and if you do, it will take care of you in return.
Every time I work with my sourdough starter, I think about the ways in which humans from different cultures make representations of deities for the deities to inhabit. And I wonder if we learned to do that from the wild godds of fermentation who very much need us to make homes for them if they are to work with us. I wonder what it must have been like for people in the past who worked with yeast without knowing what it was exactly - this magical entity that will take your grain and help you turn it into bread, or take other things and turn them into alcohol. The more I learn about yeast, the more wonder and awe it inspires in me.
(Godds as a term is something I picked up from Irisanya Moon and I really like it as a more gender-inclusive term.)
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